The explosions in Venezuela come as the US military has been attacking suspected drug trafficking ships. On Friday, Venezuela said it was open to negotiating an agreement with the United States to combat drug trafficking.
Maduro also said in a prerecorded interview broadcast Thursday that the United States wanted to force a change of government in Venezuela and gain access to its vast oil reserves through a months-long pressure campaign that began with a massive military deployment in the Caribbean Sea in August.
Maduro has been accused of narcoterrorism in the United States. The CIA was behind a drone strike last week on a docking area believed to have been used by Venezuelan drug cartels in what was the first known direct operation on Venezuelan soil since the United States began attacking ships in September.
The president of the United States, Donald Trump, had threatened for months that he could soon order attacks against targets in Venezuelan territory. The United States has also seized sanctioned oil tankers off the coast of Venezuela, and Trump ordered the blockade of others in a move that appeared designed to impose tighter control on the South American country’s economy.
Charging
The US military has been attacking ships in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean since early September. As of Friday, the number of known vessel collisions was 35 and the number of people killed was at least 115, according to figures announced by the Trump administration.
They followed a major buildup of U.S. forces in waters off South America, including the arrival in November of the country’s most advanced aircraft carrier, which added thousands more troops to what was already the largest military presence in the region in generations.
Trump has justified the attacks on the ships as a necessary escalation to stop the flow of drugs into the United States and claimed that the United States is involved in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels.
AP
